What if I told you that I could save you thousands and thousands of dollars a year, and you dont even have to cut back on anything important in your life? What if I promised you that, just by saving a penny a day, your whole life could change for the better? What if I said you could improve your overall finances by working less and spending more?

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Youd probably think that sounded too good to be true. Youd probably suspect that I was trying to scam you. Youd be right on both counts.

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If early reports are accurate, President Trumps budget blueprint will be trying to run that same scam on the American people. His budget will pretend that he can achieve huge savings without any pain. Hell try to focus attention on huge cuts to relatively small programs cuts thatll be devastating for the people those programs serve but wont make a dent in the overall budget picture. Hell promise that he can provide public services, fund the benefits on which American families rely and make the critical investments that grow our economy, all with less tax revenue, even as he increases spending on things like a border wall. Just like all scams, this one will sound good on the surface, but it will leave us all worse off in the end.

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In January, the Hill reported that Trump was crafting a budget plan with more than $10.5 trillion in cuts over the next decade, a deliberately eye-popping number. At the same time, Trump administration officials are promising that popular and critical programs such as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid will remain untouched, and that he will actually increase military spending significantly. These goals are all but impossible to reconcile. If he exempts Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid (which he cant cut, even if he wants to, without persuading Congress to change existing laws), theres only $13.7 trillion in spending even available to cut over the next 10 years. That means Trumps budget would have to reduce all other public services and programs everything from veterans benefits to health-care research to highways to special education by more than 75 percent to meet his spending-cuts goal. Like all great scams, the claim of massive cuts with no pain falls apart the moment you look a little closer.